A 71-year-old woman and three firefighters Friday were recovering at a Riverside County hospital after they were attacked by thousands of killer bees.

The incident happened around 4:40 p.m. Thursday in a gated community on Lucerne Drive in Palm Desert, CalFire said.

The woman suffered 1,000 stings and looked like she was wearing a suit of bees when firefighters found her, Battalion Chief Mark Williams said.

She was quickly put into an ambulance and taken to a local hospital with major injuries. The woman went into shock, but is expected to recover.

Five firefighters suffered stings to their faces and necks during the rescue. Two were treated on scene, while three others were transported to Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage with minor injuries, according to CalFire.

The bees, which are attracted to vibrations, had swarmed inside a phone companys metal box containing fiber optic equipment. A private company was later called to remove two hives said there were approximately 60,000-70,000 confirmed Africanized honey bees, officials said.

Africanized honey bees, commonly known as killer bees, arrived in the Coachella Valley in the 1990s, the Desert Sun reported.

The bees, which are attracted to vibrations, had swarmed inside a phone companys metal box containing fiber optic equipment. A private company was later called to remove two hives said there were approximately 60,000-70,000 confirmed Africanized honey bees, officials said.

The bees are not attracted to vibrations and they did not swarm into the phone companies metal box.

I live where we have rattlesnakes and cottonmouths and black widows and brown recluses etc., etc............but nothing scares me like the killer bee. That is one hellish experience and you normally don’t make it out.

“How do you identify killer bees? Do you have to look for the little teardrop tattoos?”

They give each other gang signs.

Actually you can’t identify them with certainty except through genetic testing. They look the same as European. The Africanized bees are a hybrid. A real good indication, though, is that they’re chasing you and stinging the s*** out of you.

-——The bees are not attracted to vibrations and they did not swarm into the phone companies metal box-—

You are correct.

At some point in the past, the colony did swarm and those charged with the responsibility made a decision to set up in the wonderful metal box. It is an ideal hive. (perhaps little to hot in summer, but they are African and like the heat)

The decision is not made by the queen. She follows the worker committee that selected and agreed on the new location

Until we learn to communicate with Bees, we can forget about communicating with ET

14
posted on 03/07/2014 1:01:00 PM PST
by bert
((K.E. N.P. N.C. +12 ..... History is a process, not an event)

True, no worse individually than any honey bee. But it’s the crazy “defend the hive at all costs, banzai!” attitude that they have that makes them dangerous. Get swarmed by 10,000 of them. No place to go. I don’t want to know what that feels like.

I was watching a program on them recently and common wisdom was that an attacking swarm of them would pursue you 1/2 mile to a mile after initiating the attack. Two guys (in suits) intentionally disturbed a hive of them and those bees chased those guys in excess of 5 miles while attacking them. Imagine that, 5 miles worth of hundreds or thousands of bees attacking you.

“Two guys (in suits) intentionally disturbed a hive of them and those bees chased those guys in excess of 5 miles while attacking them. Imagine that, 5 miles worth of hundreds or thousands of bees attacking you.”

Yeah, that’s the difference between them and the European bees. The European bees will usually break off the attack at about 10-20 feet. But there are exceptions. You can get a hot hive.

All in all, keeping them is fun. Assuming of course that you have a warped sense of fun.

The rural telephone linemen that I worked with doing data installation would talk about going to the interconnect or “B” box to test pairs. I finally asked why it was called the “B” box, if it some sort of hierarchy of box types etc. No, it was because they commonly had nesting Bees or wasps inside, they called them Bee boxes.

Back in the late 90’s we had severe colony death problems, mites were blamed. I lost all my bees. We still have no bees locally. There are acres of white clover at the near by state bark but no bees

I put up a notice at the volunteer fire department to call me if a swarm showed up. I always got calls and collected swarms but they could not be sustained.

One year I did not clean up the dead hive. Wax moths invaded and made the worst mess you can imagine. One day I saw bee going into the wreck. Then another and then another. I opened it up and a swarm had occupied the hive and cleaned up enough to get started. They were drawing wax on the empty frames on the plastic wax base!. I was (and still am) ashamed of allowing the mess to not be cleaned up. I then jumped in and cleaned it all up and put in new wax in the brood chamber and one super. They did well but did not survive the winter... they just perished.

I quit. I sold most of my stuff and gave one complete hive, smoker, veil, gloves etc to a 16 year old boy that was busting at the seam to have some bees

The question always was...... do I have bees or do bees have me?

35
posted on 03/07/2014 3:06:47 PM PST
by bert
((K.E. N.P. N.C. +12 ..... History is a process, not an event)

I don’t worry much about snakes when I’m out hunting around here (western AZ), but I never want to set off a hive of Africanized bees. I would probably die, because I don’t think I could run a mile in this terrain before being stung to death.

I am in the exact same situation. I hunt frequently and it has scared me to think about what I might be able to actually do to fend off an attack. Last year here a man was cutting a small pasture on a tractor and disturbed a hive of them and after jumping of the tractor and trying to run for safety he only made it around a quarter of a mile before being overcome.

About all I can do is to watch and listen for bees, and try to avoid hive locations. A local beekeeper once told me that Africanized bees have a warning behavior of flying into you, so if you notice bees bumping into you, go the other way. She said that if you were to swat one, though, the pheromones released by the dying bee would definitely trigger an attack.

Sad to hear it. Hive mortality has been bad but I think folks have taken the tack that it is what it is and just split hives like crazy. If you’re gonna lose a third, double your hives and you’ll end up with what you had or a litttle better. Since I’ve not kept bees before varroa I have nothing to compare it to.

So far this year all my hives are alive or at least they were a week ago so its looking good. I think the bees are developing something of a tolerance for the mites and with the relatively soft treatments there is less reason to shy away from treating. We’ll see how it goes but I’m optimistic.....

....and then some other dread disease or pest will come in. Exploding brood? Self immolating drones?

One big change that I’m seeing evolve is the aversion to package bees. People are doing nucs.

Oh and we’re just the barely tolerated staff sent to serve the colony.

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